And this will make no more sense than the other one did!

So, first: My insanely fancy bean trellis!



There is, of course, a story here, and it goes like this. Last year, I planted just a couple of Stueben yellow-eyed beans on something of a whim. I got about seven pods out of the two plants, which turned out to be (I thought) pole-bean type. (There are both pole and bush types of these, so, planting store-bought beans really was a crap-shoot that way.)

I harvested those pods, carefully and gently dried the beans, and put them into my seed box. There were exactly twenty beans-worth-saving. And then this year, I stuck my bean towers in the ground, planted the beans and waited.

They grew, and grew, and grew…and did not show the slightest sign of wanting to vine. Instead, they were acting extremely bush-like. They were spreading out instead of striving up. Every other day, I would inspect them closely, looking for the telltale tendrils that say, “Hi. I’m a vine, and I’m looking for something I can climb!”

Nada.

Eventually, as my midget not-pole beans began crowding around the base of the coveted bean towers and still not reaching, you know, up, I thought I had to be suffering some form of memory loss and that these had actually been bush-type beans.

And thus it was that I yanked the bean towers out, patted the beans fondly on their collective little blossoms and moved the towers over to become cucumber towers instead.

…about, oh, two days after the cucumbers were coming up? Vines.

On the one hand, I’m a bit relieved that they are, indeed, pole beans. Because I had such vivid memories on that front, and was frankly a bit perturbed by the fact that I had been so thoroughly wrong. I mean, what else am I not remembering quite right? I might be rich, famous and glamorous right now! Only I don’t remember it that way!

On the other hand, now I’m a bit perturbed by the fact that I was so willing to talk myself out of what I knew was the case. I remember the vines. I remember dealing with the vines. I was growing them on this little oddball patch of dirt, just to see what would happen. And they grew into these insanely long vines.

But I talked myself out of that pretty easily, all things considered. Which worries me. Because, seriously: What if I am actually filthy rich, but talked myself out of it because I thought I had conclusive evidence to the contrary, but I was wrong?!

These are the things that keep me up at night. Along with low back pain and, thanks to Recent Developments, a rollicking case of nausea and really vivid dreams that make even less sense than my usual rather…cough-cough…quirky subconscious offerings. (Y’all can imagine, right?)

In related news, today was my first work from home day. I worked from home today because yesterday I was pretty sure I was going to barf or something. Plus I almost just sort of randomly fell over backwards on an escalator because my inner ear got into a fist-fight with my other senses and kept insisting I had to lean back! further! further! QUICK, YOU’RE GOING TO FALL FORWARD OFF THIS THING, IT’S MOVING WAY FASTER THAN YOU THINK IT IS!

YA KNOW…I’d forgotten just how badly birth control messes with my system.

But it is coming back to me – oh yes, it is definitely coming back to me.

Last night, I was awake an irritatingly large chunk of the night because of stomach cramping and other complaints – like my stomach insisting I was going to throw up any second and then going, “Ha ha, fooled you!!” after I’d clawed my way out of bed to crouch obediently in the bathroom for a while.

This morning, I looked at the package of birth control pills, thought about yesterday’s middle-of-day smackdown (which felt like somebody had punched me in the gut with a syringe full of stomach flu virus or something), and decided that in my considered opinion, I could not support the given instructions to take one of the blasted things twice daily for the first week because said instructions violate my Personal Code, which includes among many other things the fact I will not turn a blind eye to human arrogance.

BECAUSE I MEAN, YOU KNOW…what is a week? It’s just a meaningless human construct we’ve erected in a pathetic attempt to declare ourselves the masters of the world we inhabit by inflicting our own rules on its nature; thus we divide a cycle of dark-follows-light into blocks that only make sense to someone who has lost three of their fingers in a tragic gardening accident (ooo, I so can relate!) and call it “a week.”

Because that person also couldn’t spell and was trying to describe how they felt after the accident, see? It’s all just made up, people! And I refuse to support such hubris by obeying instructions such as, “Take one pill twice daily for one week.”

{cue vaguely patriotic music}

We must face our uncertainties, embrace our own smallness, and not continue to double-down on chemicals which are making us almost fall over backwards on a BART escalator due to a sudden wave of vertigo. Word.

(Yes. I am the queen of rationalization and amplification.)

(Also, someday I fully expect that I will drop dead of something completely preventable because of logic very similar to this.)

(But, not this time. My hormones just got lost while trying to navigate through a normal menstrual cycle a few months ago. And then my body got all confused about whether or not it was pregnant, decided it totally was, and hilarity ensued.)

(Said hilarity being even worse than side effects of the hormones? I guess I’ll put up with it.)

(But not twice daily for an arbitrary duration set by human beings on a power trip. Because I have SOME standards.)